


California Dreaming

by Chainofprospit



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-The Dream Thieves, Road Trips, TRC Ship Swap challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 07:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5154728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chainofprospit/pseuds/Chainofprospit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kavinsky and Ronan go on a road trip. (My submission for 2015's TRC Ship Swap challenge.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	California Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zee/gifts).



> The requestor mentioned a road trip and I ran with it. Consider this set at an ambiguous time pre-Dream Thieves, before Shit Went Down(TM). I have a lot of problems with Kavinsky and it can be questionable to write them together after TDT, so I wanted to keep it chill and less problematic. 
> 
> I also may have written this all at once in like a couple hours, so... forgive me for any typos or general lack of polishing.

Joseph Kavinsky was a man of many talents, but one of his most impeccable was timing. The thing about him, though, was that whenever he did something he was talented at, you could never be sure whether to call it the worst or the best. You just knew that it was the most of whatever Kavinsky had wanted it to be.

Ronan wondered what Kavinsky had wanted his timing to be, this time. Convenient? Dramatic? Suspicious? Maybe all three? It was working, at least; throwing him off, and it had only been .3 seconds since he spotted the white Mitsubishi swerving into the parking lot of Monmouth Manufacturing no more than fifteen minutes since Gansey had departed, off to the airport to join his family on a trip to Aruba for Spring break.

Everyone knew Adam worked all day every break, and Noah was… somewhere. You never really knew where Noah was on off days unless you’d invited him to something. Ronan did not have plans. He never had plans. Spring Break was when his father had used to take the boys to New York every year. Now, he didn’t go anywhere.

Kavinsky didn’t turn his car off, just shifted into park and rolled open the moonroof. Ronan pushed open one of the dusty glass windowpanes on the south-facing wall of the factory, leaning out of it with a beer in hand and squinting down at the town’s most notorious delinquent. In a moment, Kavinsky’s head was visible; he’d contorted so that he could prop himself out of the moonroof, skinny arms supporting him.

“Hey, Lynch,” he called up, as though there was any chance of Ronan not knowing he was there. “Get down here.”

“What do you want?” Ronan called back. If he’d had a cigarette, he would have flicked the butt down towards him, but he didn’t, so he littered a bottlecap instead.

Kavinsky grinned as though he’d been waiting to be asked this. When Kavinsky grinned, it always seemed to light up his white-rimmed sunglasses, too, as though they were actually part of his face and not an artificial accessory. “Get in, loser, we’re going driving.”

Ronan considered. Gansey didn’t know everything about Ronan’s relationship with the dealer and forger, but he would still certainly disapprove. On the other hand, one of Ronan’s most potent addictions was pissing Gansey off. And the thing about Kavinsky was, he was only dangerous if he didn’t like you. Mostly. Or, well, if he didn’t care about you. Ronan wasn’t sure Kavinsky straight-up liked anyone, but he was pretty sure Kavinsky hated him in a fond way.

Mostly.

Ronan squinted down at the Evo a little more, if just to make Kavinsky squirm, then let out what he knew Gansey called his smoker’s breath. It’s not like it would be any funner to spend Spring Break alone. He set the beer down on the floor, disappeared to grab his phone and jacket, then returned at the window again to hoist himself out and onto the fire escape. He quashed the voice in his head that said he could have gone out the regular exit and was just trying to look cool. He didn’t need to look cool for anyone.

Once he’d dropped onto the asphalt and walked up to the Evo, boots crunching the gravel and broken glass surrounding the building, he leaned down and against the car’s passenger side window. Kavinsky, who had dropped back into his seat, rolled it down abidingly.

“What makes you think I’d want to be on the road with a shithead like you?” he said.

“I’ve got good music,” said Kavinsky, unfazed, and pressed the unlock button. The audible click was an invitation. A damning one. Ronan wondered why Kavinsky wasn’t with his friends, his crew, his cronies. He didn’t ask.

“Your music is shit,” he said, opening the door and dropping in.

“There’s a good sport,” said Kavinsky, obviously pleased, and Ronan tried to ignore the itch in his palms as he pulled his seatbelt on. This was going nowhere. Gansey didn’t need to know. He just needed to get out sometimes.

“Buckle up, prettyboy,” said Kavinsky, though Ronan was already buckled. He put the car into gear and began rolling forward, swerving onto the road at unnecessary speed. Ronan wet his dry lips with his tongue. “We’re going on a road trip.”

He turned the music up.

* * *

It wasn’t until an hour after sunset that Ronan asked where they were going. They’d driven until he stopped recognizing roads, occasionally cackling at unintentionally hilarious billboards and picking up shitty food at Sonic. Now they’d just gotten back on the Interstate after filling up gas at a tiny petrol station. Ronan wasn’t sure what town they were in, or how long Kavinsky intended to keep driving around aimlessly, ear-bleeding Bulgarian rap blasting and drumming and yelling along with the lyrics. He wasn’t sure if the sensation prickling at his skin was a desire to get back home, or an urge to know what he and Kavinsky were doing so that he could commit to it.

“It’s Spring Break,” said Kavinsky, as though that explained everything. “We’re going to the beach.”

It was too late for it to be warm along the shore anymore, and they’d been going the wrong direction.

“What beach?” asked Ronan incredulously.

“Santa Monica,” said Kavinsky. “I’ve always wanted to see it. I hear they’ve got a sick Ferris wheel.”

Something squeezed an organ caged in Ronan’s chest. “Santa Monica, California?”

“No, Santa Monica, France,” retorted Kavinsky, tossing another cigarette butt out the window and earning a glare from a woman rolling by in a Nissan. “Yes, dick-for-brains. I told you; it’s a road trip.”

Ronan leaned back in the passenger’s seat incredulously. Because of course Kavinsky wouldn’t think you’d need clothes or a suitcase for a road trip. Or a map. Or hotel reservations. Or a warning. All Kavinsky needed was a car, substances to abuse, and his shitty rap music.

And Ronan, apparently.

There was some kind of fluttering that he wanted to deny meant a strange kind of flattery at being chosen. Maybe he just wanted someone to argue with, since Prokopenko certainly wouldn’t.

He looked forward again, at the brakelights on the highway and the muted shadows of hills in the distance.

“Well, shit,” he said finally.

Kavinsky tilted back his head and laughed, like it was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. “Well, shit!” he agreed, clearly elated. He rolled open the moonroof again, the rush of air making a soft whistling. Then he whooped like he was high on the speed of the open road, loud and gleeful like a dare. “Come on!” He beckoned at Ronan.

Ronan looked at him, not sure whether to be thrown off by amity or let himself be drawn into the other’s reckless infamy. The Evo soared past a motorcycle, who flipped them off. It tore from him a grin. “Fuck you!” he shouted out the window, then joined in the hollering. Kavinsky banged on the dashboard, egging him on.

This time Ronan turned the music up.

* * *

The first night they drove till dawn, until Kavinsky skidded off into a supermarket parking lot and gave Ronan a hundred dollar bill and told him to go buy a couple of Monsters and anything he wanted to eat. When he came back, Kavinsky was asleep, and it was all he could do not to touch him to see if he was real. Kavinsky didn’t seem like the sort of person who’d willingly let his guard down around anyone. Yet here he was, snoring.

Kavinsky only slept for a few hours. Ronan didn’t, not until it was morning bright and his eyes were tired and they were back on the road again, Kavinsky energized with two Monsters and a couple of pills Ronan didn’t ask about. He did ask what state they were in. His battery was almost dead.

“Oklahoma,” said Kavinsky. “Like the musical.”

Ronan had not known there was a musical, and did not want to know why Kavinsky knew this. “Whatever you say,” he told him, offering him a sandwich, but Kavinsky let Ronan eat both halves of the food he’d bought, and drove until Ronan passed out in the passenger’s seat.

Kavinsky woke him hours later by yanking open the car door and letting him half-roll out, saved by the seatbelt, into the wake of the blistering sun. He was high on something, and you’d never know he hadn’t slept. Ronan wondered vaguely if they’d crashed or anything. He was too dizzy and half-blinded to see anything at first.

Once he stumbled out, though, he could see that there hadn’t been any misadventure. Kavinsky kept yelling something at him, the same two words. It took a moment for them to make sense.

“Get up!” he was saying, over and over. “Get up, get up!” Then, when he saw Ronan was finally paying attention, he slapped him on the shoulder enthusiastically. Ronan flipped him off.

“We’re in Texas, princess,” announced Kavinsky. “As in, Everything’s bigger in. Do you feel bigger?”

His pupils were certainly bigger, Ronan didn’t say. As big as the moon.

“I feel bigger. C’mon.” He slapped him again, then spread out his arms. “Feel it.”

Ronan swatted his hand away, but straightened up properly and looked around anyway. He let his arms lift out from his body, just a little. Something did feel bigger. The space around him, the distance from here to Monmouth, that thing in his chest he was steadfastly ignoring. Every breath he took. The world. The universe. This stupid week.

“Do you feel it?” asked Kavinsky, after a moment. He was standing right behind Ronan now, his breath on his neck, sending a tickle down his spine to… somewhere.

“Yeah,” sighed Ronan. “I feel it.”

Kavinsky’s lips hovered dangerously close to Ronan’s ear––he could feel the heat in his jaw, boiling from the inside out, nothing to do with the Texan sun––then blew in it impishly.

“Aw, fuck off,” blurted Ronan, flinching at the unexpected air and pushing Kavinsky away again. He could still feel the heat in his cheeks, but pretended he didn’t while Kavinsky howled and cackled.

* * *

The second night Kavinsky pulled in at a cheap neon hotel in Arizona or New Mexico, he wasn’t sure which, the cheap cactus dash figure he’d insisted on getting as a souvenir rattling. It was some hour in the morning and Ronan had dozed again in the past few minutes.

“I feel like cheap TV,” is what Kavinsky announced when Ronan realized where they were parked and side-eyed him warily. “Plus, minibar.” He didn’t protest, just stifled a yawn and tried to rub his stiff neck contrarily.

He wondered if Kavinsky was paying for this.

He wondered why he was here.

He wondered if anyone else in the gang would have understood how he could spend two days trapped in a small vehicle with a kid that, for all intents and purposes, he didn’t even like, no deep conversations or maps or attractions, just a pair of dice hanging from the rearview and the road and a bullshit soundtrack and the occasional rush of adrenaline when they hollered out the windows on a highway to nowhere.

He didn’t think they would.

He didn’t think they’d understand how it tasted like cigarettes and stale whiskey and dust and gasoline and addiction. He didn’t think they’d understand how much he liked it.

Kavinsky crashed on the ugly bedspread of the twin bed closest to the patio, leaving Ronan with the TV to flip through muted channels, suddenly wide awake and wondering why he kept ending up watching Kavinsky sleep.

* * *

The third night, Ronan woke up in the badly sized white T-shirt he’d bought from a convenience store near the border of Nevada, to the clunk of Kavinsky’s door shutting and the scent of Starbucks coffee.

“Get that disgusting shit away from me,” he grunted, shifting up from where his head had been resting smushed against the side of his door.

“I got muffins, too,” said Kavinsky. “You have weird sleeping hours, dude. You aren’t even on anything; at least I have an excuse. We’re here, by the way.”

Ronan leaned forward, ignoring the paper bag offered to him in favor of staring out at the Pacific Ocean, which he’d never seen before in real life. He didn’t know why he was surprised. The sun was beginning to set over it, and down on the left out of Kavinsky’s window the silhouette of the Santa Monica boardwalk was burnished in orange.

“You owe me a car wash, too,” Kavinsky went on. “A bird shat on my roof while I was getting you coffee.”

Ronan didn’t care about Kavinsky’s car or bird shit. He was still trying to figure out what he’d expected other than this. His organs in a cooler, maybe. He still wasn’t sure why he’d come.

Belatedly, he remembered he’d dreamt this time when he slept. There weren’t many strong details, just the sensation of warm breath on his neck, like when Kavinsky had stood behind him the day before in Texas, only this time instead of being blown on by cool air there was more warmth. Lips pressed at the crook of his shoulder. Fingers at his waist. He remembered his head leaning back, and the desire to shiver.

While he’d been remembering, Kavinsky had stepped out of the car again, leaving the coffee in the cupholders and the bag with muffins in the driver’s seat. The doors were unlocked, and he stood in front of the car, back to Ronan, lifting his arms to fold his hands at his spiky hair. With the window cracked, Ronan could smell the salty air, hear the screeching of sea gulls, the waves.

He imagined Gansey coming back from Aruba, perfectly tanned, bearing some guidebook he’d defaced with nonsense about the environment and cultural history. He’d ask him, politely, “What did you do over break?” He imagined telling him this.

It was ridiculous.

Kavinsky was turning back towards him, crowned by light. He looked like some sort of creature that had walked out of the sea, some kind of goblin, too sharp and thin and gleaming. But he grinned at Ronan like he was the sun.

“Are you coming?” he called towards the car.

Ronan thought he might have figured out what that thing in his chest was, finally. It was him, wanting. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt want.

He got out of the car.

 


End file.
